


Beat

by LiterallyThePresident



Series: Connection [8]
Category: Bakugan Battle Brawlers
Genre: Ace is Angery, discussion of anatomy, slight medical talk but nothing wild
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:13:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22220860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiterallyThePresident/pseuds/LiterallyThePresident
Summary: Ace learns an unsettling fact about human anatomy
Relationships: Ace Grit & Kazami Shun
Series: Connection [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1566988
Comments: 7
Kudos: 68





	Beat

“I hate you!” Shun laughed, a hand on his chest as he recovered from the jumpscare Dan had given him, “You jerk, I almost decked you!”

“Revenge!” Dan laughed happily, slumped against the doorway with laughter, “Sweet sweet revenge!”

“My heart is in my goddamn throat.” Shun huffed, though mirth still tugged at the corners of his lips. Something about the way he said it bothered Ace, but he wasn’t fully sure what it was.

“That’s what you get for your crimes!” Dan laughed, “Bet you feel real dumb for telling my mom about my bad diet now, huh?”

“I’ll get back to you on that when my heartbeat slows to a reasonable level.” Shun lightly flicked Dan’s nose, earning a noise of complaint. That was it, Ace realized. They kept saying heartbeat. Singular. Not heartsbeat. Perhaps it was a mistranslation? Or a quirk of language?

“It’s just your heart, you’ll be fine.” Dan joked, waving dismissively.

“Well I’ve only got the one!” Shun laughed, and Ace felt a lump rise in his throat. Not a mistranslation then. He knew it. He’d known something was wrong from the moment he’d heard Shun’s irregular heartsbeat. The fact that Shun was able to joke about it spoke of confidence, but still, losing the functionality of a heart was a traumatic event. He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like. He couldn’t imagine feeling that still weight where a pumping heart should be.

“What happened?” Ace asked quietly, pained on his friend’s behalf, and Shun turned to look at him.

“Hm?” he asked, and Dan took the distraction as his opportunity to slip away before Shun could think to retaliate, leaving Ace and Shun alone.

“What happened to your heart?” Ace clarified, “I-If it’s okay to ask?”

“Just now? Dan jumpscared me, you were there.” Shun blinked, and Ace shook his head.

“I meant why do you only have one operational heart?” he asked bluntly, “What happened to the other one?”

“Other...?” Shun blinked, “Ace, I’ll be honest, I’m not entirely sure what you’re talking about.”

“You said you only have one heart.” he tried to clarify again, frowning, “So what happened to the other one?”

“We... only have one heart.” Shun said carefully, “Are you telling me you have two?” Ace blinked.

“I... What?”

“Humans only have one heart.” he said again, tapping the left side of his chest, “Right here.”

“O... One heart!?” Ace exclaimed, “That can’t be right!”

“You always react so violently to these revelations.” Shin gave him a wry smile, “But I’ll be honest, the fact that you apparently have two hearts is kinda psyching me out right now.”

“Is that why your heartsbeat was so strange when you rescued me?” Ace demanded, “This whole time I’ve been terrified that you had some kind of cardiac condition!”

“Aw, you worried about me?” he teased, “It’s really fine. My heart is normal and healthy.”

“If you say so.” Ace huffed, “One heart, ridiculous. Unbelievable. How did you people make it past the grass age?” Shun’s expression gentled a little, still amused, but more understanding.

“Do you want to listen?” he asked, “Would it ease your mind?” Ace gave him a scrutinizing look, considering. On one hand, the idea of hearing only one heart beating was an alarming one, the stuff of dramas and tragedies. On the other, perhaps his dark-addled memory had been off, and the sound wasn’t as unsettling as he remembered.

“Would that be weird?” Ace asked, and Shun smiled.

“Not at all.” he replied warmly, letting his arms fall to his sides in clear invitation, “Heartbeats are often used to help calm people down, as I’m sure vestals also do. Human babies are best lulled to sleep by placing their ear against their mother’s heartbeat.” Hesitantly, Ace placed his hands on Shun’s biceps, leaning forward to rest his ear against his chest. Shun kept his breathing even, and Ace listened intently for the sound.

_One-two-pause. One-two-pause. One-two-pause._

It made his skin crawl, the unnatural sound. The unnerving pause between every two beats. It wasn’t right. It made him feel nauseas. He pulled back with a shudder.

“I want an X-ray of you guys.” he said immediately, “No more scary surprises, let’s go to medical right now, this is ridiculous.”

“Alright.” Shun shrugged, looking vaguely amused, “But only if I get an X-ray of you.”

“Deal.”

—

“What the fuck?” Ace whispered, softly but with a lot of feeling, “What the  _fuck_ _?”_ He stared at the X-ray on the screen, trying to make sense of the frankly fucked up anatomy.

“You don’t seem happy.” Shun commented idly, lounging like a sene cat on the biobed, “Which part’s upsetting you?”

“Everything!” Ace exclaimed, “One heart, two kidneys, an organ that... I don’t even know what that is!”

“Which one?” Shun cocked his head, and Ace gestured angrily to the organ he couldn’t identify. Shun glanced at it and then laughed.

“The appendix.” he explained, like that meant anything to Ace, “It really doesn’t do anything.”

“Doesn’t  _do_ anything!?”

“Well, sometimes it’ll burst and we need to get it removed or we’ll die.” Shun shrugged, and Ace’s eye twitched. Shun, seeing his growing frustration, raised an eyebrow.

“Why do you always seem so upset when you learn new things?” he asked curiously, and Ace grumbled, turning away to look at the X-ray. Stars above, the liver was where the stomach should be. Unbelievable.

“I just... I don’t know.” Ace huffed, “I like knowing things. I hate being confronted with things I don’t understand. Especially if it affects my friends.”

“How so?” Shun asked, and Ace crossed his arms, fighting the urge to pace.

“Like... I don’t know. Like if one of you gets sick, how will we know which medicines will help and which will make it worse? What if there’s another incident like the one last week? If Marucho hadn’t realized we were using radiation and told us it was lethal to humans, we might have killed Dan.  _My_ ignorance almost killed Dan.”

“Ace...” Shun said quietly, “That wasn’t your fault. Assumptions were made on both sides, it’s no one’s fault.”

“I assumed radiation did nothing to humans, and Dan assumed we knew it was dangerous to him.” Ace said, gritting his teeth, “If I had just asked beforehand, if I had known more about you guys, the danger wouldn’t have been there at all.”

“Ace, blaming yourself-“

“If something had happened to you, for instance.” Ace turned to look at him, trying not to let his emotional break show too clearly, “Some vestal medical equipment has been known to briefly stop the secondary heart in order to fix another system. If we had ever used something like that on one of you, not knowing you only had one heart, we could have killed you.”

“Ace.” Shun’s hands came down on his shoulders, and Ace wondered absently when he had moved from the biobed, “You’re starting to freak out. I need you to calm down, okay? Breathe.” Ace tried to do as he asked, taking deep, even breaths, matching his breathing to Shun’s. It helped, embarrassing as it was. He felt a little calmer after a few moments. Why did Shun have to be like this? A rock in the rapids, the eye of a storm. A place for a person to stop and catch their breath.

“I...” he cleared his throat, “Sorry, I...”

“It’s okay.” Shun smiled reassuringly, “I know it’s scary. I’m always worried about you guys.”

“Why?” he managed to snort, though Shun’s hands on his shoulders felt... kinda nice. Humans tended to run warmer than vestals, and the warmth seeped into his skin, “We’re not the ones with the messed up anatomy.”

“To you.” Shun said gently, “To me, your anatomy  _is_ messed up. You have two hearts, only one kidney, a stomach where the liver should be, smaller lungs than us, and weird intestines. We’re alien to each other. What’s weird to me is normal to you, and vice versa. Remember when we met, when you tried to protect Mira and Baron from me because of my eyes?”

“I remember.” he grumbled, and Shun gave him a small smile.

“You know, you terrified me.” he admitted. Ace raised his eyebrows with surprise, drawing a laugh from Shun, “It’s true. I saw your creepy dead doll eyes, and my immediate thought was ‘Ah. I’m in Hell.’”

“Hell? Seriously?” Ace snorted, and Shun gave a soft laugh.

“I didn’t mean to come to New Vestroia.” he explained, “I was minding my own business on a mountain when the portal opened and dragged me in. Suddenly I’m in an unfamiliar place, all scrubland and a weird sky, and I keep running into Bakugan who act feral, and people who look like humans with dead eyes who all act like I’m some kind of freak. What was I supposed to think?”

“You... didn’t mean to come here?” Ace asked, and Shun nodded.

“Yeah, so I was worried I’d somehow died and gone to Hell.” he shrugged, “But then I saw Marucho battling Mylene, and then I knew I wasn’t. Marucho wouldn’t be in Hell.”

“That must have been scary.” he murmured, trying to imagine what that must have been like. To get yanked from your home and dragged into a strange world where nothing is familiar and everything is off. He didn’t want to imagine how frightening it must have been.

“It was. But I got a little off track, so sorry about that. My point is, don’t beat yourself up.” Shun said, “Mistakes will happen, accidents and misunderstandings will happen.”

“I just-“

“-and isn’t that wonderful?” Shun continued, bringing Ace up short.

“What?” he blinked, and Shun finally let his hands drop, taking Ace’s hands and squeezing comfortingly.

“Isn’t it exciting?” he asked, “A whole new world waiting for you. New knowledge to explore, new things to learn. It would be so boring if you knew everything. There would be nothing left to get excited about.”

“I... guess.” he conceded, “Still a little frightening. Learning new things is fun and all, but one mistake on my part could kill you.”

“The same goes for me.” he laughed, releasing his hands, “I could make any number of mistakes that could hurt you. Ignorance goes both ways. What’s important is that we learn from them, and that we don’t let our fears ruin our drive for knowledge.”

“Why is Dan the leader?” Ace sighed, “You seem so much wiser than him.” Shun laughed softly, rubbing the back of his neck in a show of uncharacteristic shyness.

“I was... forced to grow up too fast.” he admitted, “Dead parents, disapproving grandpa, you know how it is.”

“Kind of.” Ace said quietly, “I ran away from a shitty home when I was young. Been on my own ever since.”

“I’m sorry.” Shun murmured, and Ace was suddenly embarrassed.

“Don’t mention it.” he waved, “Seriously, don’t.”

“Okay.” Shun laughed, “But if you ever need an overbearing grandpa, mine could use some fresh meat.” That startled a laugh out of Ace, and the atmosphere lightened. 

“I’ll keep that in mind.” he said with a smile, and Shun amicably clapped his shoulder.

“So, why are your lungs so small?” he asked, skillfully changing the subject, and Ace gave a half-hearted glare despite his relief.

“Why are yours so big?” he shot back, but he could feel the smile tugging at his lips. Shun grinned, his amber eyes twinkling, and Ace couldn’t see why Grandpa Kazami would disapprove of anything Shun did.

“Why do you have those weirdly sharp canines?” Shun asked, and Ace laughed.

“For tearing flesh.” he replied, “Why do you have an entire other section of your brain that we don’t have?”

“That’s the part that controls sleep.” Shun answered, “Why are your intestines... like that?”

They went back and forth, asking questions and getting answers. They traded information about the biological systems and internal workings, about the nervous system and organs, what substances were dangerous to each other and what ones weren’t. Shun seemed to have taken Ace’s words under consideration, he spoke softly and patiently even when Ace got tetchy about a human quirk. By the end of the day, Ace had a long list of things that harmed humans, and Shun had a similar list of things that harmed vestals. They shared a few laughs, Ace finding it ridiculous that lead was poison to humans, and Shun thinking it hilarious that baking soda made vestals ill. When Dan finally got up the courage to show his face again, he found Ace and Shun sitting across from each other on the biobed, deep in a heated discussion about the pros and cons of bees.

“They’re dangerous pests.” Ace was scowling, “One sting and you’re dead.”

“Bee stings may be deadly to vestals, but to most humans they’re just an annoyance.” Shun was arguing, “Bees are good, they’re friendly and cute and they pollinate the flowers.”

“How can humans survive a bee sting? That’s insane.”

“Easily.” Shun huffed, “It hurts for a bit and then goes away. Bees only kill humans if they’re allergic. They’re otherwise harmless.”

“Harmless? A bee almost killed me once!” Ace growled, and Shun rolled his eyes dramatically.

“I once got stung by a bee eight times when it got trapped in my shirt.” he replied, “It sucked, but I didn’t die.”

“Because your human and humans are weird. Bees are menaces!” Ace declared, and Shun met his fervor with equal passion.

“Bees are our friends!” he exclaimed.

“So you weirdos are scared of ghosts but think bees are your friends? You’re all crazy!”

“No, you’re crazy! Bees are just doing their best.”

“They should be wiped out!”

“You take that back!”

The arguing continued with no sign of stopping, and Dan wisely backed out of the room and closed the door. 


End file.
